


in hearts at peace

by aryaflint



Series: in hearts at peace [1]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced miscarriage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, and brief mentions of canon-typical violence/sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-17 08:51:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14829174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryaflint/pseuds/aryaflint
Summary: He’d never been the tallest man, wiry where Arthur was lanky, but with a pang in her heart, inexplicably, she thought he looked thin – almost small. Even in the dull light of the day, he had shadows in the gaunt slopes of his cheekbones, and his service tunic was loose in the shoulders. For a long moment, too long, he looked lost amid the celebration, like the eye of the storm as the platform swirled around him.And whereas she had leaped into her father’s arms without a thought or care in the world, with one look at Tommy, she paused.-Or, Tommy Shelby's homecoming, through the eyes of the woman who loves him.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> hello, and welcome to my totally self-indulgent exploration of tommy shelby's attempts to adjust back to civilian life, where i marry my love of peaky blinders with my intense interest in wwi. this has been months in the making around the stress of real life, so i do hope you like it.
> 
> the title is from "the soldier" by rupert brooke, which itself is not really relevant to the fic, but the line just stood out to me during my forays into wwi poetry.

For four years, Brigid Murphy had spent Christmas alone.

Not _completely_ , of course.

She’d had Polly and Ada and Finn, and John’s kids. For three of those years, she’d had Martha, and Martha had been her dearest friend in the world. She’d spent four Christmas Eves cuddled up with the five kids on the Shelby sofa, watching the candles flicker on the tree and the shadows dancing on the wall, had played cards with Finn and sung carols with Katie. For four years, she’d conveniently retired for the night before anyone else, before Polly settled the kids in for their Christmas ghost story, only to jump out from behind the betting shop’s curtains, face marred with a fearsome scowl, and had laughed herself to tears when they squealed and ran. She had woken up on four Christmas mornings, nose and toes frozen, to the kids peaking over the edge of her ( _his_ ) bed, begging her to wake up _because we can’t start the gifts without you, Bridie, please!_

She’d spent her afternoons in the hospital, distributing gifts and letters to those of the wounded who had families, sitting with the ones who did not. The hospital was always in want of volunteers, but the holidays were especially barren as nurses and doctors took their leave. Brigid found comfort in being productive, in filling her every waking hour with distraction, and yet being with the men – those maimed and disfigured, blinded and burned – on Christmas did little to take her mind of her _own_ men in France.

No, all things considered, Brigid’s Christmases were filled with people, those for whom she cared and those who cared for her.

But for four years, she had walked home on Christmas Day, down the dirty streets of Small Heath, with only the whistling wind for company, and found her home empty. She’d sat herself down at her mother’s old desk and wrote three letters – for Da, for Patrick, and for Tommy – even though last year, she’d only posted two, and her tears had stained the third. 

(But it had felt wrong to break tradition.)

She wouldn’t spend a fifth the same way.

Shivering on the train platform, shoulder-to-shoulder with Polly, Brigid could feel every single frayed or thinned piece of fabric her coat had to offer, because those spots marked the places where the bitter cold had seeped through, turning her bones to ice. She’d long since given up on stilling her chattering teeth, and instead occupied her time with imagining that night and the stew on the hob, when the grey, snow-laden clouds would be visible only through the foggy windows of the Shelby home, and she’d have more than just an old coat to keep her warm. She’d have Tommy’s arms.

Except his train was late. Caught up in Oxford, according to the stationmaster, an hour behind schedule, and she could feel the beginnings of a headache behind her tired eyes.

It served as a reminder of how little sleep she’d gotten the night before, tossing and turning as her old home creaked in the cold. Polly had offered to have her for the night, to make it easy come morning like she had so many times during the War. And it had always been nicer that way – to sleep in a house with other people, where she could hear the others breathing and walking rather than just the old house settling in around her, especially considering that she worked right downstairs, taking bets and balancing the books to scrape up a meager but welcome wage. But Tommy’s bed – for it had never really become hers – had fresh sheets, pressed and starched, and she’d wanted them to be perfect for him.

She felt Polly’s eyes, dark and knowing, on her then. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

“Just nervous, I suppose,” Brigid murmured, shifting her weight, willing some warmth back into her frozen boots. The constant thrum of energy under her skin confirmed that, indeed, she was quite nervous. “What’s the time, Pol?”

With a sniff, Polly pulled out her pocket watch, and even though Brigid had watched her take a swig (or two) of whiskey to calm her nerves before they left Watery Lane, she thought it might have been wearing off. Her voice was crisp, tinged with annoyance, when she answered. “Half two – ridiculous. We’ve waited four bloody years, and now the trains stop working?”

“Well, they’ve got a lot of boys to get home,” she said, heart fluttering with something like unease. “I’m sure they’re running as fast as they can.”

It sounded hollow, even to herself, as her stomach churned. As if the Small Heath Rifles hadn’t already been relegated to one of the last ships out of France.

But half two was promising. Only ten minutes or so until they could truly expect them, and just the thought had Brigid’s lips trembling from something other than the cold, while she twisted the ring on her finger around and around in the pocket of her coat. She would be getting two of _her_ boys back – her father and Tommy, both scarred, but alive, their welcome on a train platform rather than in the operating theater.

Her elder brother Patrick, with those bright hazel eyes that all the Small Heath girls had loved, who’d always put up with her tagging and tripping along with him and his mates, who’d flattened Johnny O’Neill when he’d dared to steal her first kiss before her furious tears had even dried on her cheeks, had been left in Flanders.

Passchendaele, to be exact, with only the field poppies and his fellow ghosts to keep him company.

She’d gotten Tommy’s letter before she got the Army’s. By that point, he was sending her one letter for every ten she sent him, the paper dirtier and the sentences shorter. But that one had been long, and, she thought, tear-stained, accompanied by her brother’s dog tags and the photo of her that he’d carried in his haversack. It was stained, worn thin, and she was left to wonder how many nights Patrick had fallen asleep with it clutched in his fingers. In her hysteria, in the shadows of her darkened bedroom, that had been easier than thinking about the fact that he would never wake up. 

Now, Brigid tried to swallow, tried to pass off her sniff to the cold instead of the tears that were pricking at her eyes and the sadness crawling up her throat.

Today was to be a happy day, and damn the rest.

And just on time, they heard the train, shaking and screeching out of sight, smoke billowing up to join the low gray clouds. The platform came alive once more despite the drear of the day, excited chatter stirring up to match the train, as the gathered women and children pressed closer and the porters took their places. When an older woman with a weathered face, the hands of two small children clasped tightly in each of hers, jostled her as she passed, Brigid couldn’t find any annoyance to direct her way, because the train was pulling in, whistle and wheels both squealing, pale men hanging and waving out its windows, and her heart was racing.

“Finally,” Polly muttered, tone still exasperated and proper, and a grin overtook Brigid’s face, as if the older woman – her surrogate mother, really – hadn’t said a prayer every morning, noon, and night for this moment to come.

“C’mon, Pol, cheer up!” Linking their arms and tugging her forward, Brigid felt like a girl again, dragging a bright-eyed and red-cheeked Martha behind her to the boys, to an equally red John. “Surely you can spare a smile.”

Griping, Polly nonetheless followed her, a gloved hand warm, almost maternal, on top of Brigid’s. “I’ll spare a smile when I see them.”

True to her word, Polly remained tight-lipped and dry-eyed even as gaunt, enthusiastic men and boys began to spill from the train doors, even as Brigid pressed a tight hand to her mouth to hold in a sob. With her heart in her throat, apprehension and anticipation coursing through her veins, she searched each passing face for a familiar pair of icy eyes or the weather-beaten planes of her father’s face, each waving hand for the first or last hands she’d ever held. And Brigid had always had a problem with seeing the bigger picture, with seeing the forest for the trees, but today, among the dozens of khaki uniforms and screams of delight, between the smiles and tears, she couldn’t seem to pick out a single one.

“Where are they?” she begged through the trembling hand on her chin, maybe a little panicked, even as Polly settled a hand between her shoulder blades. “Polly, I don’t see them – ”

“ _Brigid!_ ” 

And before she could even think, or even breathe, for that matter, Brigid was launching herself forward, right into her father’s broad chest, an elated “ _Da!_ ” on her lips, and she really should have taken a breath, because he was squeezing her so tight that she thought he might never let go. She could feel his breath in her hair, the rattling of a sob in his chest, and then she _couldn’t_ feel the stone of the platform floor underneath her, because he had lifted her right up to swing her around, like she was just a little girl with scraped knees and freckled cheeks instead of a twenty-four-year-old woman with holes in her coat and the weight of the world on her shoulders.

When he finally set her back on solid ground, it was with a warm, familiar kiss to the forehead, and Brigid drew in a deep, almost shuddering breath, as her tears spilled over, burning on her wind-chilled cheeks. Because he was _here_ and she wouldn’t have to sleep alone in that cold, empty house anymore and she’d forgotten to dust his bedroom and he was _alive_ and Patrick –

“Don’t cry, my love,” James Murphy said, wiping at her wet cheeks with callused thumbs, meeting her eyes with the green ones they shared. His were crinkled up into a smile so warm that it could have been midsummer. “C’mon, no more time for that, Bridie, you’ve got someone else who missed ya.”

_Right._

Because right behind them, accepting a tearful, trembling kiss on the cheek from Polly, was Tommy.

Gasping, wiping at her cheeks, Brigid watched him – the tension in his shoulders, the sergeant medals on his chest, the rigid way he pulled back from Polly, who had moved to sweep a whooping John into her arms. He’d never been the tallest man, wiry where Arthur was lanky, but with a pang in her heart, inexplicably, she thought he looked thin, almost _small_. Even in the dull light of the day, he had shadows in the gaunt slopes of his cheekbones, and his service tunic was loose in the shoulders. For a long moment, too long, he looked lost amid the celebration, like the eye of the storm as the platform swirled around him.

And whereas she had leaped into her father’s arms without a thought or care in the world, with one look at Tommy, Brigid paused. A restless hand went to her hair, her dark curls swept up into a chignon at the base of her neck, and she attempted to smooth the hair that had been caught up in the wind, tucking the loose curls back under her hat, her stomach fallen to somewhere about her knees.

She thought her father, amused, might have said, “He won’t bite," even though no humor was curling in her chest, aching just from the sight of him – a reminder of four years of solitude and sorrow and grief, of all the things she’d never told him.

But then Tommy turned, and the lines of his face smoothed, his lips curling into a smile of what could only be utter relief, and he whispered, “God, _Bridie_.”

And he’d whispered her name a thousand times – gentle, from behind her on one of Charlie’s horses, all those times they’d escaped the smoke and dirt of Small Heath for the country air; conspiratorial, in the early morning haze with a bright, mischievous grin, trying to sneak out of her house before her father and brother awoke; and breathless, low and hot in her ear, the two of them sweaty and whimpering and entwined so tightly it wasn’t easy to tell where one of them began and the other ended.

But it had never quite managed to break her heart and sew it back together all at once like it did at that moment.

“Tommy.”

She was laughing and crying when she met him, her cold hands coming to his warm cheeks, his arms encircling her waist, as four years of worry and fear and misery came rushing out of her in one shaking breath. He had looked odd from afar, like a stranger, but this close, with their breath mingling in the cold December air and that bright shine in his eyes, he was Tommy.

 _Her_ Tommy.

He was pale and thin, yes, but his heart was pounding in his chest against hers, and the dimples under her fingers were still the same, and he was looking at her like he was seeing her for the first and last time.

“God, Tommy, I missed – ”

And then he was kissing her, his lips familiar and full, and it tasted a bit like her tears – or his, perhaps. Deep, open-mouthed, it demanded attention, and the noise of the platform died in her ears as he squeezed her tighter, pulling her up on her toes, muffling the sob of relief that she couldn’t quite catch. Brigid realized belatedly that she was shaking like a leaf in his arms, as the cold of the day and the warm butterflies in her stomach competed, but he pulled away, pressing kiss after kiss to the corner of her mouth, her cheeks, her jaw. 

Trying to keep ahold of her hat and giggling uncontrollably, like she had right after the first time and she’d scampered off to Martha to kiss and tell, she ducked away when he snuck down to her neck, but his insistent hands didn’t let her get far. “Tom, stop – ”

His lips, curved into a smile, met hers again to cut her off, and he slipped one hand up her back, almost electric along the curve of her spine, to her neck, his warm fingers raising gooseflesh. The feel of his skin on hers was an intimate, forgotten touch, so long had it been since he was home (over two years, in fact, since he’d had a leave long enough for the trip to be reasonable), and desire curled low in her belly, despite the noisy, crowded platform, despite the teasing howls of Arthur and John, despite the fact that her _father_ was right behind them.

“You look different,” Tommy finally murmured, lips brushing against hers, still smiling in the little bubble they’d created amongst the chaos around them. “Not like your photo, but – fuck, not that – you’re still beautiful, sorry, just older – ”

Laughing, Brigid stared up at him, taking him in, still pressed so tightly against him that she could feel his racing heart against hers. Her tone was low, teasing, when she responded, “You still know how to charm a woman, Thomas Shelby.”

She didn’t miss the slight furrow of his brow, the way his lips parted as if he had a retort. She thought, for a split second, that a shadow had fallen over his eyes, and that previous uncertainty crept back in, twisting in her belly, bringing a hot flush to her cheeks. It was almost, for a moment, like he had been the last time he came home on leave, over two years prior.

He’d attempted to mask the change, of course, but he couldn’t hide his lack of sleep, the way his muscles would tense under her touch, the short, almost cold way he would rebuff Polly or Finn. Meanwhile, she had attempted to fill the long silences that fell between them, to catch his attention when it would stray to some invisible point beyond her, to wonder if her Tommy was underneath that hard exterior.

And that had just been for two weeks – not long enough to learn _this_ Tommy, whose fingers felt the same but whose brow furrowed at her japes.

Would she still know how to talk to him?

Except he interrupted her thoughts to mumble, “Your hands are bloody freezing, woman,” and he was smiling again against the hold she had on his cheeks. “It’s too cold to go without gloves.”

“Oh – I’m sorry,” she said, voice thick with emotion, as she drew her hands away, thinking of the pair she’d not even bothered to bring because there were holes in seven of ten fingers and she hadn’t had the time to mend them. Around her work at Watery Lane and the second-hand dress shop just outside Small Heath where she minded the till and mended the shop's wares for the bulk of the War, her every free moment had been spent in the hospital.

Yet before she could withdraw completely, he caught her hands in his, and right there, winking in the weak sunlight, was his ring on her fourth finger. It caught his eye, the little oval-shaped diamond set on a platinum band, and before Brigid could speak, could _think_ , he pressed a kiss right on top of it, his lips warming the skin around the chilled metal.

Sniffing to himself, Tommy clenched his jaw, Adam’s apple bobing as he swallowed. “You’ve still got it?”

Had he thought she wouldn’t?

“Yes, of course,” she whispered, her heart in her throat. “I never took it off, not once.”

She’d spent four years twisting it around her finger, nervous and sad and full of love any time her thoughts strayed to him; four years staring at it as she tried to pour out her life onto lined paper and never knowing if, this time, she might not receive a response; four years fielding questions about it, about _him_ , from strangers and old friends alike, and the inevitable looks of pity when she explained he was in France.

The _oh-love-he’s-as-good-as-gone_ looks.

Those had inflamed her, anger and misery churning in her belly and poisoning every part of her. The wedding might have slipped her mind after six months, but she had never considered he might not come home.

“Good,” he whispered, holding her hands close to his chest and underneath his own to warm them. Nodding, more to himself than anyone else, he repeated, “That’s good.”

“Oi, Tommy – ” Arthur, his voice ringing about the emptying platform and cap askew, staggered over to throw an arm around his brother’s shoulders. “We need to drop you and Bridie off at the church on our way home?”

A sharp laugh on her lips, Brigid stepped back before Arthur could pull her in as well, and felt Tommy’s eyes, intense and steady, on her. “I should think not, Arthur – I’ll not be married in this old coat.” 

“Oh, come off it, love, you always look – ”

“That’s enough, Arthur,” Tommy said, clapping him on the shoulder. The words came out easy enough, but Brigid didn’t miss the way Tommy pursed and licked his lips, his impossibly blue eyes sliding past her as he directed Arthur away. “Let’s get home, eh? I hear Pol’s got a stew on.”

“You’re welcome, too, James, of course,” Polly added.

Turning around, feeling suddenly cold and lonely as the warmth of Tommy’s presence slipped away, Brigid found her father tipping his cap to Polly. Tommy, leading away a boisterous Arthur and John, didn’t look back, and from behind, in their matching khaki service uniforms, they could have been any other family. That realization sunk into her belly like a heavy stone through water, and her teeth were sharp, stinging, where she had drawn the inside of her cheek between them.

Brigid could have – _should_ have – followed the boys.

John was complaining about how Polly had time to make a stew and yet didn’t even have the decency to bring his kids to platform, and Brigid could have cut in, cuffed John around the ear and told him that his kids, just like their father, were impossible to bring in public and maintain any sense of respectability. When Polly shook her head, adjusting her hat against the wind, and followed them, she could have linked arms with the older woman. She could have promised not to tell anyone that it had been _her_ chopping vegetables and searing the beef just that morning while Ada had flounced around the Shelby home, frustrated to near tears that she would be left to mind Finn and all four of John’s kids, while Polly had snapped and hissed to convince her.

But instead, Brigid found herself rooted in place, teeth chattering once more as the wind picked up, snapping at her ankles and worming its way back into her coat. And as the four Shelbys grew smaller, nearly enveloped by the tearful and delighted crowds around them, it was her father, curling her arm around his own, who finally drew her attention.

“C’mon, dear,” he murmured, leading her after them, after her _fiancé_ who had never even looked back. “You’ve been standing out in the cold for far too long.”

The silence that fell between them, then, was an odd one. It was rarely quiet in the Murphy home, even though it had been only three of them for so long. Patrick was always shouting about something, _I won’t be home for dinner!_ and _Bridie, stop touching my things!_ , crowing when he would beat their father at cards and bemoaning when she would best them both. Their mum had loved music, had taught them both to play a little piano, and he would always cajole Brigid into playing a duet, even though his fingers had always been more skilled than hers where that was concerned. 

Perhaps Brigid had never considered how much of their home’s noise – it’s _life_ – had come from Patrick. It had certainly been cold and lonely and silent without him.

Swiping at her eyes, Brigid sniffed and shivered once more, tucking herself into her father’s side and hoping that he would attribute her sudden wave of emotion to the cold.

“What are you thinking about?”

No such luck, then.

Heart aching, her eyes found the back of Tommy’s head, his cap the only one of the three still straight. And no matter how much she longed for Patrick, no matter how badly that deep-rooted, all-consuming grief reared its ugly head, it was nothing compared to that hollow feeling in her chest as she watched Tommy grow smaller.

Her voice was low, little better than a tearful child, when she finally managed to whisper, “Is he… Is he that different, Da? Tommy?” 

With a deep sigh, his medals clinking together as they dodged past another eager reunion, her father responded, “He is.”

“Is it good or bad?” It felt like the respectful question to ask, if not the right one, and the words tasted like ash on her tongue. As if she had the right to judge him, after what she knew he’d seen, what he’d been through, after he’d been _shot_. Nobody would come back the same.

At least he came back.

“It’s just different, Bridie,” her father said. His tone was sweet, tinged with sadness, and inexplicably, it reminded her of her mother, because it was always the way he would speak of her. “Every single one of them is different.”

Bridie had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about the three Shelby brothers, but she decided not to press, especially not when he drew in slow, deep breath, and continued. “But I know he still loves you, Bridie. He always had that photo of you in his hands – saw him flatten a man who’d snatched it away in the trenches one time. You know, when they would send the men under, down into the tunnels, they weren’t allowed to take their haversacks, just whatever they could fit in their pockets. A lot of men would take Bibles, even though they only had a lantern or two to see by. But Tommy always took that photo of you.”

That photo.

The one she’d sat for not a fortnight before nearly all of Small Heath shipped out, sandwiched in between all of the other young women in town trying to create a memento for their loved ones. Brigid had thought it dumb, a waste of their precious little money – and the boys were meant to be home by Christmas, anyway – but Ada had finally convinced her, those big blue eyes wide with dreams of love. Martha had carefully styled her hair, taming the long, frizzy curls that Brigid herself never really knew what to do with, and Polly lent her some rouge for her lips and cheeks. 

Her face had never been so hot as when she handed it to Tommy, unable to even make eye contact due to the embarrassment burning inside her, feeling little better than the empty-headed girls that had always vied for his attention. But he had tucked it gently into his pocket, and when he kissed her, she felt his racing heart against her own.

“Just give him some time, love. Let him remember what it’s like to have his head above ground.”

And when she hummed and nodded, Brigid hoped, in some forbidden part of her mind that made her stomach twist into knots, that he wouldn’t bury her in the meantime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my first published work for this fandom and on this site, so i'd love to hear what you think!


	2. ii.

By only the light of oil lamp beside her, Brigid slowly, methodically counted up the dress shop’s daily profit, sliding coins across the counter and balancing the accounts as the tall flame danced, casting lively shadows across the shop. The sun had long since set outside, plunging Birmingham’s cold, muddy streets into darkness.

She’d not expected to be there so late – Mrs. Thompson, the kindly old seamstress who owned the shop, had been leaving her to close up on her own for over two years now, so she had plenty of experience with the accounts. But neither had she anticipated the afternoon’s large crowd. It was the Christmas season, after all, and the first with all of the men back. If she hadn’t been helping a woman who wanted to look beautiful for her first Christmas dinner with her husband in four years, she was helping a gaunt, confused man trying to find a nice gift for his wife. The day had filled the shop’s coffers and left Brigid with aching feet, her callused fingers sore from the number of dresses she’d been asked to take in or let out.

Sighing, she rolled up the last few pence and tallied up numbers in front of her as her empty stomach grumbled. All that was left was to lock the book and the heavy bag of coins into the safe, and then she could begin her long trek back to Small Heath, back to the Shelby home for a (hopefully still) warm roast. Polly had been on a maternal kick since the boys returned, ordering everyone about and cooking every evening, and Brigid and her father had an open invitation to each meal. He had loathed to take Polly up on it, however, and Brigid had instead come home every evening to simple supper in their old kitchen, rusty from disuse, and her father, who’d yet to wrestle his old job back from the B.S.A., reading at the table.

It was a peculiar feeling, still, to come home and find the lamps still lit.

But since Arthur and John had been drinking more than eating since their return, and Tommy had been God-knows-where more often than not, Brigid hoped for Polly’s sake that her father had kept his promise to eat with the Shelbys that evening. The thought of their dining table as empty as it had been for the War brought that all-too-familiar hollow feeling to her chest, worming into every sad part of her heart.

When the tumblers of the safe finally clicked back into place, a hoarse groan escaped her throat as she stood, slow and careful, on knees that still complained from the hours she’d spent crouching, measuring hems and adjusting skirts. Her sore fingers throbbed as she pulled on her coat, fumbling with the brass buttons, already protesting at the imminent, withering chill. And yet when she reached into the pocket of her coat, she found her newly-mended gloves missing. 

“Where – ” 

Stuffing a hand in the other pocket, only to come up empty once more, Brigid’s face crumbled. She remembered at that moment where she had left them – folded neatly on the edge of their scrubbed kitchen table, right next to the pairs of her father’s old work trousers that she needed to take in to accommodate the weight he’d lost in France. He’d thanked her on her way out the door, placed a warm, affectionate kiss on each of her cheeks, and promised that by the end of the day he would have his job back.

Inexplicably, tired tears pricked at her eyes, the miles back to Small Heath seeming impossibly far. With something like shame curdling in her chest, Brigid’s heart thrummed anxiously under her skin, and she wished for a few extra layers, for a reprieve from the cold snap that had squeezed Birmingham in its icy grip, and more than anything else, unprompted, she wished for Tommy. He’d always been so good at keeping her warm when they were out late together, whether it was with his own coat, or the gravelly compliments that would slip over her flushed skin, or with hot, wandering hands. 

But instead, she’d hardly seen him at all, really, in the week since they reunited on the train platform, left trying to reconcile his wide grin of delight with every shuttered look and silence, resolute and impassable, that had passed between them since. And maybe she should have expected it – everyone had heard the stories about what war could do to men – but Tommy…

Tommy had always seemed a little invincible, in a way, with his careless laugh and reckless smirk, that sort of charming magic that could make someone forget their own name. Men came back different, she knew, but not her Tommy.

(Patrick had been the same.)

“Fucking hell, Brigid,” she muttered, swiping at her eyes before her fat tears of self-pity could roll down her cheeks, “pull yourself together.”

She wasn’t sure her Tommy had come back at all. 

At that moment, a loud, glass-rattling knock echoed like the crack of a whip throughout the shop, causing her to start and her dejection to give way to a cold, steely panic. Hair rising on the back of her neck, she dug with trembling hands through the mess of her bag for her switchblade, the slim, black-varnished weapon Tommy gave her before he left, muttering something about not being around to protect her anymore. It had seemed a little backward, at the time – he was going to war, and she was the one getting the knife – but there’d been so much sincerity in his blazing look that she hadn’t questioned him.

When there came another knock, even louder, Brigid sucked in an unnerved gasp, and, with switchblade finally in hand, she clicked it open without a second thought. The sound of it was unfamiliar, the weight of it foreign as her clumsy, inexperienced hand curled around it.

Fuck, who did she think she was? Just a wisp of a girl, standing in a secondhand dress shop like she was going to hold her ground. It was easy enough to be bold when bold meant slapping the boy who’d snatched her hair ribbon away, or dodging every creaky floorboard to meet Tommy with only the moonlight to keep them company, or fudging the numbers in the betting shop to funnel in money from the booze and the tobacco.

It was another thing to cut a man.

Frozen in place, she didn’t even dare to breathe. Perhaps she should hide? Too many men had come back from the War with nothing left – wife and children taken by influenza, turned away from their old jobs. The papers had reported a rise in robberies, and rapes as well, by disenchanted men trying to make sense of their old lives through the haze of whiskey and opium. She’d seen the worst of it in the hospital, the men who would wake up in a cold sweat, trembling and thrashing, shouting in hoarse, half-asleep voices about how they _can’t go back, please, don’t send me back –_

“ _Brigid! Brigid, are you in there?”_

Except all at once, the breath she had been holding tumbled out, the switchblade nearly slipping right from her fingers, because she would know that voice anywhere, as familiar as her own reflection. Panic washed away like Birmingham’s dust and ash after a good rain, and, her lips trembling around a curse, Brigid stumbled out of the backroom, muscles still tense. In the soft light of the lamp she’d forgotten to blow out, she found Tommy on the shop’s front step.

Through the frosted glass, he looked pale, a haunted figure in the coal-black night with a razor cap tucked neatly over his hair, fist raised to knock once more. She couldn’t see his eyes, or the recognition that must have dawned on his face, but his fist unclenched when she emerged.

“ _Brigid,_ ” she heard, followed by the soft tapping of his fingers on the glass. “ _Brigid, open up, love._ ”

And he must have been speaking rather loudly to be heard through the glass, but the soft _love_ he tacked onto the end of the sentence, like an afterthought, brought a flutter to her stomach. It was a tone long-forgotten, one once saved for those special moments when it was just the two of them, but tinged with a newer desperation, the same as he’d met her with on the platform.

The desperation was different. Her Tommy had always been laughing and japing, his voice loud and bright, trapping her in his arms to trade whispers and secrets and kisses with only a breath between them. This new Tommy, with her Tommy’s hands and eyes but none of his warmth, would enter a room without even a glance in her direction, and the few times she’d managed to corner him in the Shelby kitchen, the only thing his lips did was purse around a lit cigarette, his expression impassive and impatient as she attempted to make conversation. To say she was starved for his affection was hardly an adequate way to describe the cold feeling he brought to her chest now, but the sight of him on the other side of the door, long past sundown with poorly concealed dread on his face, had perhaps begun to warm her.

Shaking her head, she moved forward to let him in, fumbling with the heavy deadbolt that always stuck in the cold, until finally, the door swung open, caught by the wind, and he hurried inside. He seemed to fill the space, in that way that someone out of their comfort zone was always so easy to spot.

“What are you doing here, Tommy?” she said, eyes tracing him – the firm line of his lips, the tension in his shoulders, the way he stared, almost as if she wouldn’t notice, right over the top of her head.

“You – ” With him came the now ever-present smell of smoke, and he cleared his throat, pausing to root through his pocket for his cigarette tin. “You didn’t come home. Polly and your da were worried. I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

And as she watched him, his frozen hands thumbing open the tin and eyes still trained away from her, she wondered if he had a gun on him. She’d seen the leather holster around his shoulders, the faintest wink of metal underneath the neat, ironed fabric of his suit jacket, just earlier that week. She’d been sat in the Shelby kitchen, helping Finn with his numbers, when he’d passed through with nary a word as he adjusted his collar, and Brigid had tasted bile in the back of her throat.

Her Tommy had never carried a gun on him unless he was expecting trouble.

When he finally managed to retrieve a cigarette from the tin, she startled, managing around the lump in her throat, “You can’t smoke in here.”

 _That_ caught his attention, and he meet her gaze with one brow raised. Voice small, she continued, “It’s bad for the dresses. Makes them smell.”

Drawing in a deep breath, almost like punctuation, he slipped the cigarette back into the tin with a single nod. The silence between them was charged, uncharted territory that Brigid didn’t know how to cross – she didn’t know how to deal with being treated like an old acquaintance by the man who had known her, dearly and intimately, a lifetime ago, whose ring still sat on her finger. Despite the chill that tended to creep in around the glass storefront, her coat was unbearably warm, prickling around her neck, bringing a flush to her skin.

“Are you alright, then?” His tone was forced, almost brisk, even as she felt his eyes rake the slope of her neck and shoulders, down to the hand that was still clasped, tight and nervous, around the switchblade. “You didn’t say you’d be out this late.” 

“Yeah, Tommy, I’m fine.” Drawing in a deep breath, she forced herself to relax, but she still sounded wooden. “Just had to balance the books – busy day and all. I’m sorry to have worried you.”

“And I, you.” With another raised brow, she thought he almost smirked as he inclined his head to the switchblade. “Gonna stick me with that?”

The snap of the switchblade folding in her hand cut through the low sound of his laugh, but she heard it just the same.

Scoffing, she couldn’t fight the smile that perked on her lips, the affection fluttering in her stomach. “No – not unless you give me a reason.”

“I’ll be on my best behavior.” He stuck out his arm, then, an unspoken invitation that she didn’t dare refuse, so infrequent was his attention these days. 

Yet when she moved forward to take it, her eyes caught the lamp, still burning, on the shop counter, and she backtracked on clumsy feet to blow it out. She hoped that she wasn’t imagining his whispered laugh, or his dancing eyes, when she finally met him, folding herself neatly into his side, arm curled around his. They’d always fit together well, the way she could tuck the curve of her body into his chest, bury her face in the crook of his shoulder as sure as a lock clicking into place.

And walking down the dimly lit street with him shoulder-to-shoulder was so familiar that Brigid could nearly forget about the War, about the distance, about the skipped meals and sidestepped conversations and the scorned, hot tears that slipped down her cheeks that very first night, when she finally mustered up the nerve to ask if she could stay the night and received only silence in response. 

And as they tracked the familiar streets of Birmingham, the smoke and ash were more familiar than him. As close as he had been since they embraced on the platform, Tommy asked her about her day, listened as she blathered on about the endless stream of people and the aching in her knees and the angry grumbling in her stomach, and Brigid was struggling to reconcile his courtesy with the week of disinterest. In fact, he spoke so little, she would have thought he _wasn’t_ paying her any mind, except she could feel the heavy weight of his eyes every time he would cast them to her.

Pulling her closer when she shivered, the wind slicing at her cheeks, he asked, “Do you like it? Working there?”

“Well enough,” she stuttered around chattering teeth. “It’s decent money, and I’ve always liked sewing.”

She _hadn’t_ always liked sewing, and he bloody well knew it. Brigid had learned to sew at her mother’s knee, with stitches that were never as neat or as straight, but with constant encouragement as she worked through the frayed hems of her own skirts and the torn knees of Patrick’s trousers. The bright sun and bustling streets of Small Heath had always been more intriguing to her, and she’d hated her mother, then.

And yet, Brigid had thanked her mother every morning for four years, watching sunken-eyed women trek to the B.S.A. through the window above her desk at the betting shop. She would have sewed a thousand dressed a day to avoid working on a great, clattering machine for ten hours at a time, and on many days, it felt like she did just that. 

Around the cigarette he’d placed in his mouth, the match flame glowing bright in the pitch of the night, Tommy said, “You don’t need it anymore, you know – we can bring you on for more hours at the shop. Keep you in Small Heath.” 

The shop. 

Close to home, and Polly. Close to _him_. There were hardly more hours to be had at the shop, to her knowledge – hardly any room to _move_ , with all of the men back. And yet she’d gladly fight for every inch of space if it meant feeling like she was of any use anymore.

“Will there be more hours at the shop?” Brigid’s heart was beating a chorus against her ribs, like it was trying to escape.

In a hushed, vicious whisper only days prior, Polly had cornered her at the safe, ordered her to crack Tommy open and pick at his brain – _He’ll be the bloody death of me, and only you can save me!_ dripping from her lips like poison. If Brigid hadn’t already gathered that the transition of power between her and the boys was going poorly, the ugly flush on Polly’s face, the rattling glass of Tommy’s office door, and Arthur’s drunken shouting would have clued her in.

“Seems likely.” It was curt, almost clipped, like a business transaction. If she didn’t have his ring on her finger, she’d have thought it was an interview. “You know the books better than anyone, Polly tells me, and you can add up the numbers twice as fast as any of the men. We’ll make the hours.”

“Been making plans, then?” The words were clumsy in her mouth, outing her for a fraud, for the desperate fishing expedition she was on. “Have you all had a family meeting?”

Brigid was quite certain that any family meeting would have had to take place in the Garrison’s snug, where John and Arthur had made themselves at home with a bottle of Irish whiskey each, but it was possible – she hoped.

“I have been thinking – about the shop, and the future. Expanding.” Tommy paused, exhaling a cloud of smoke, and as the familiar scent of tobacco settled in her lungs, Brigid suspected it was the most information he had divulged, to anyone, thus far. 

And she didn’t miss the pointed exclusion of his family.

“They will know our strategy in due course.”

“Strategy?” Burrowing her chin down into her coat, Brigid felt the weight of his gaze fall on her once more. “What’s – what’s wrong with the way things have been?” 

His voice was almost too casual when he responded, a little muffled around his cigarette. “I know what you’re trying to do. I know those are Polly’s words coming out of your mouth. What yarn has she been spinning, eh?”

Embarrassment burned on her face, and for a moment, Brigid felt like she had lit up as bright as his match flame. And though the cold and the wind snapping at her ankles encouraged her to tuck herself closer to him, it felt, for a moment, like a gulf had opened up between them where tenuous threads had begun to sew them back together minutes before.

“She’s just worried,” she ventured, heart pounding faster than a racehorse at full speed. “She worried so much for four years that I don’t think she knows how to stop.”

That statement fell between them as Tommy took a long drag of his cigarette, his boots clicking methodically on the cobbled street. Still hot with embarrassment, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him, or scheme further. Tommy had always kept his secrets tucked deep inside him, and yet he never hid behind the sturdy irons they kept her out now. Instead, Brigid watched the flickering Christmas candles through the curtained windows of each passing home, the streets shrinking smaller as they approached Small Heath.

When he finally responded, it was with a substantial sigh. “Yeah, well, I worry, too. That’s how I know we need to make changes. And not everyone’s going to agree, but it’s the only way.”

He flicked his cigarette away, and when it landed, hissing, in a muddy pile of frost melt, they were left with only the filtered light of the moon to guide them. And yet, Brigid had never felt lost in Small Heath. The Peaky Blinders had run the neighborhood for years, and she was always running with them – even before she’d been Tommy’s girl, she’d been Patrick’s nosey kid sister, and it didn’t take much cunning or talent with numbers to impress a bunch of Small Heath boys who’d left school at age twelve.

Tone definitive, he continued. “We can’t keep pushing whiskey up and down the river and taking bets on other people’s horses. The Shelby family needs to become legitimate if we’re to make it.” And when he paused, she thought she might have imagined that he pulled her closer. Tommy had always run hot, burning like a furnace when they were tucked under the sheets together, and his solid presence relieved the chill that had sunk into her bones and made a home there.

“Polly might not trust me anymore, but she trusts you. And that’s why I need _you_ on my side, Bridie.”

Brigid tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. “I’m always on your side,” she murmured, drawing her bare, stiff hand out of the worn pocket of her coat. In the weak moonlight, the diamond winked at her like an old friend when she waved it in his direction. “That’s what this means.”

“I don’t expect you to always be on my side.” Inexplicably, he huffed a laugh, and she wasn’t looking at him, but she could see his face in her mind’s eye – that half smirk, the slight roll of his eyes. She’d seen it thousands of times, only a breath away, with cold bricks pressed tight against her back, or ensconced in the safety of his bedroom. “Picked you because you have sense, yeah? I trust you to knock me around if I’m being daft. So, please tell me if you think I’m being daft.”

Scoffing, she moved to stuff her hand back into her coat pocket, except Tommy caught it in his, his spare hand settling on top of hers on their entwined arms. His palm was callused, more than she remembered, from the years he’d spent tunneling under the earth as war raged above his hand. And yet despite that, it was the first time in a week, with the almost japing tone in his voice, that Brigid recognized him. With the distant clamor of the B.S.A., and Small Heath humming around them, it could have been 1914 again.

“You’ve never been daft a day in your life. Except maybe when you thought we could start sneaking around without Patrick noticing.”

Something like melancholy slinked down inside her, unbidden, as she remembered the day that Patrick had caught them snogging in the back garden like a pair of teenagers – well, she still had been, even if Tommy had no excuse. With that victorious glint in his eye, he’d crowed about how he’d been trying to catch them for weeks and how John, who perhaps had too much faith in his brother’s subtlety, owed him three quid. And, blinking furiously against the wind, against what might have been tears, Brigid had to force a smile.

Patrick had always loved winning, unable to control that unbearable grin on his face, the competitive streak that had made him and Tommy such good mates and so terrible for one another. If they weren’t sneaking Charlie’s horses to race outside of the city, they were competing to see who could swim across the Cut faster, or nip the fattest wallet, or hold their liquor better. 

Tommy’s voice had quieted, his low Brummie drawl barely audible over the distant din of the munitions factory, and when he spoke, she thought he sounded sad. “Always was a bit too perceptive, your brother. Runs in the family.”

And it was the first time, she realized, anyone had spoken of him, her dear brother, since they’d returned. Her father, even, had clammed up, turned away, every time she mentioned him.

Words wavering, Brigid said, “It was the only way we could keep up with you.”

Sadness was unfamiliar on Tommy, as if he were wearing another man’s coat. Even when his mum passed, even when his dad ran off again, Tommy had locked his misery deep inside his heart and thrown the key into the filth of the Cut. Brigid, though, had long since grown accustomed to the churning in her belly, the heaviness in her chest. When the sickness finally took her mum, she’d thought she might be crushed under the weight of it, and with Patrick gone, it was like a wound that wouldn’t heal, festering, infecting every happy part of her. There had been days throughout the war when she'd barely gotten out of bed, fearing that sharp pain of loss and guilt would all just swallow her up, seemingly lost in her memories.

Before she even realized, hot tears were welling in her eyes, blurring the dark shapes of Small Heath, until Tommy’s arm, steady and warm beside her, was the only thing holding her up. Her brother had left a hole in her heart bigger than Birmingham, bigger than all of England, and Brigid needed Tommy to fill it.

“Tom, will you tell me about him – Patrick, at the end?” Words tumbled out like the men stumbled out of the pub at last call, like they had stumbled out of the trenches. No one would talk about _Patrick_ and his laughing eyes and his reckless smile, not Arthur or John or her fucking father, and Brigid felt almost wild when she gripped Tommy’s hand tighter, her nails biting into his cold skin. “Please, I – I read your letter but… Was he – did he – ”

She needed to know – his hopes and fears, his dreams, whether he’d still given that dumb grin any time he was challenged to do something. Had he grown taller? Had he learned to mend his own trousers, to let out the hem if he grew –

“Come on, now, Brigid,” Tommy said, too loud for the quiet of the street. “We don’t need to talk about this here.”

He kept walking, his strides too long for her now, without a glance in her direction, and Brigid staggered on a loose stone in the cobbled street, tears streaking down her cheeks and gasping breath fogging up in the frigid night air. It reminded her of the dozen times in only a week that he had walked away from her, like they hadn’t once spent hours and hours whispering against one another’s lips about the life they would build together. She wanted to scream and pull her hair out, snatch his cap and put the razors where his mouth was, as the desperate hands of grief twisted her heart out like a wet rag and left her with only fury.

“ _No_ ,” she sobbed, tripping again as she jerked him to a halt, and Tommy stopped with a frustrated sigh, as if she were no more than a petulant child, and met her eyes with his impassive blue. “No, Thomas Shelby, you – you _listen_ to me. I’m sick and tired of the fucking lot of you pretending like, like he doesn’t even exist! You can’t just… _forget_ , Tommy, that he was a _person_ and he was one of your best mates and he was my fucking _brother_. Do you not even _care_ – ” 

“Care?” Through her tears, Brigid could see the lines on his face, the twitch of anger on his lips. “Yeah, Brigid, I fucking _care_ , but forgive me if I have to forget – he wasn’t the only man I watched die.”

“No, no, of course not, because Tommy Shelby had cut a hundred men before he even got to France,” she spat, feeling her anger roll over her like a wave, leaving her shuddering and shaking in the dim street, Tommy’s blazing eyes brighter than even the moon.

She heard him scoff and turn on his heel as if to leave again, and she grabbed him by the elbow in a fit of rage, pulling him back to her. “No, _look at me_. You’d cut a hundred men and never cared, but Patrick was _good_ and he was one of the only people I had left. I’m not gonna forget him, and I’m not gonna let anyone else either!”

“Oh, trust me, I’m never gonna forget him – I can’t even _look_ at you without thinking about the bullet I watched go through his brains.”

And Tommy might as well have slapped her. Stumbling backward, away from him and his harsh words and his _eyes_ , Brigid found herself gasping, struggling to breathe, as the darkness on the edges of her vision closed in. 

None of the letters had mentioned _that_.

And she wanted to scream, to hit, to tell him just what she thought about every time she looked at _him_. Yet Brigid could only press a hand to her mouth, holding in a sob and her soul, and she was standing on some fucking street in Small Heath with only Tommy and her misery for company but she could _see_ _it_ – Patrick, his white teeth shining through the dirt on his face, standing up a little too tall, or stumbling across no man’s land – 

“You didn’t know.”

Tommy’s voice was gruff, voice thick with what might have been tears of his own, but Brigid had turned away. They were standing outside the church, her mother's church, with the mean old priest that had sent her from confessional in tears more times than she could count.

(Even now, his words, a malicious _whore_ , lingered in the back of her mind, and turned her nauseous.)

She’d sat in that church, squirming and bored, tucked between her da and Patrick every Sunday for thirteen years – until her mum passed. Her father had never forced them to go, not after they'd held her funeral and Patrick had stood up, face consumed by grief, right in the middle of mass, and left her with their stone-faced father and her hands fisted into her skirt.

They should have had Patrick's funeral there, too, should have buried him right next to mum. But all he got was a bullet through his brains and some godforsaken grave in Flanders.

Brigid felt her face collapse, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, and then Tommy's arms were around her, pulling her close. She wanted to fight, to pull away and scream and scratch and make him feel every single wretched sting of sorrow inside her, but the moment he pressed her face to his chest, the devil inside abandoned her. Sobs wracked her body, muffled into his coat, as four years’ worth of grief and a week’s worth of anger escaped in a shuddering, all-consuming fit.

“I miss him, Tommy, _god_ ,” she wept, quivering hands swiping at her hot tears, hiccupping like a child. In his arms, shaking like a leaf, she certainly felt like one. “I miss him so much it feels like I’ll never be alright again.” 

She could feel his breath in her hair, the trembling sigh in his voice when he responded, “So do I.”

Time seemed to pass in a haze as they stood, freezing together and wrapped in one another’s arms. She fisted her hands in the fabric of his coat, holding herself to reality, as the panic filling every part of her heart and brain slowly faded, leaving behind only scattered thoughts and a dull, throbbing pain in her head with every beat of her heart.

“Listen, Bridie,” he finally whispered, nudging her chin up so their eyes could meet. She found him red-eyed, his cheeks shining in the moonlight, and her face was throbbing, swollen from her tears, as he continued. “One day, we’ll talk about Patrick. I just… I need some time. We all need some time.”

She could only nod, biting down, hard and sharp, on her lower lip to keep herself from breaking down once more. The cold night air was burning in her lungs, stinging her wet cheeks, but when his hands found hers, and he held up her left hand so that the diamond could catch the light, she felt something warm, something almost foreign now, in her heart.

“And one day,” he continued, his voice low, rough like the cobblestones under their feet, “after all the planning and thinking has passed, and I’ve got a legal betting license in me name, we’ll talk about this.”

The kiss he pressed to her knuckles, right beside his ring on her finger, was light, almost hesitant, nothing like the intimate one he’d placed in the same spot on the platform, or the hot, open-mouthed kiss she pulled him into, all those years ago, when he gave it to her.

Sniffling, Brigid tried not to let more tears leak out. “Didn’t know what you thought about that, now.”

Slowly, tentatively, he tucked her arm back around his, and she leaned against him for support as they began their walk once more. “Come on, love – Polly’s going to have me head for keeping you out so late." 

For a long moment, only the distant munitions factory and Brigid’s heavy breathing could be heard, the oppressive cold swallowing any other sound. Her anger had left her with only Tommy to keep her warm, and she found herself trembling against him.

Quiet, almost nervous, he said, “I never stopped thinking about it. Thinking about you with that ring on your finger was all that got me through the worst days in France.”

Her chest and her stomach both felt hollow, but Brigid sucked in a deep breath, blinking furiously in the darkness of the street, and gave him a nod. His ring had been her one constant, her comfort, for four years, as she twisted it around her finger and thought of him. Every night, she’d said a prayer, and even though it had been for her da and Patrick too, it was the ring that she held onto, that she felt against her lips as she whispered into her hands.

She wanted to say something more – she had so many words inside her she felt like she might burst, like she might never have enough time to get them all out before she was consumed by her grief and guilt and sorrow. But exhaustion was pricking at her eyes, reminding her of the time and her long day, of her cold hands and her empty belly. So she just whispered, “I still love you, Tommy. I do.” 

It was true. Underneath everything else, her love for him beat steady and sure in her heart. 

And she heard him let out a long, slow sigh, just barely audible over the nighttime clamor of Small Heath. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who's read and left kudos so far! i really appreciate it :)
> 
> let me know what you think of this chapter!


	3. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING that this chapter references a past miscarriage, for any of you who may be sensitive to that subject matter

“ _Oi, Katie – time to go!_ ” 

John’s voice rang throughout the Shelby home from the entryway, muffling the crackling fire and the complaints of his three other children, just as Brigid watched fat tears well in Katie’s big brown eyes – Martha’s eyes. She'd finally found the young girl behind the settee, her knees drawn to her chest, and it was with an aching heart that Brigid crouched down to settle a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Voice frank and low, Brigid brushed back Katie’s messy fringe and said, “Katie, love, you’ve got to go home with your dad.” 

“I don’t want to. I don’t like it at home,” she responded with all the solemnity a teary six year old could muster, and for a moment, she looked so much like Martha, who’d always been so sincere, that Brigid’s stomach fluttered.

Of all the children, poor Katie had been struggling the hardest to adjust to life back at home, to the old, dusty house that seemed so incomplete without Martha's steady presence, churning out pies and biscuits in a kitchen more spotless than any Brigid had ever seen. Instead, they'd spent the last years of the war filling the empty rooms of Watery Lane and running Polly around the twist.

Katie had started wetting the bed again, a habit they'd long since broken, and had taken to climbing into John's bed to toss and turn. And she always, John reported, asked for Brigid.

“You must,” Brigid said, her heart breaking for the sweet girl and everything she'd lost. "It's time to be a big girl, my love."

Nearly six years ago now, Brigid stood arm-in-arm with Tommy at the head of the church, Martha and John beaming by their sides with a squirming babe in each of their arms, and promised in front of God and all the Shelbys to watch after the twins should anything happen to their parents. And thank God for Polly, because it was never meant to happen so soon. 

“Can you come with us, Bridie? You tell the best stories, not dad.” Katie’s words were as watery as her eyes. "You can start reading our new book."

When she hadn't been jumping out from behind the curtains to bring their stories to life on Christmas Day, Brigid had been reading to the children herself. All of the classics, and a few originals, with the voices and sound effects to match. But rather than ending the day by settling in Finn and John's kids for a brand new story, Brigid would be going home to her da, who'd woken her that morning with the smell of frying bacon and a modest gift exchange, and who'd broken down into shaking tears when she presented him with that old quilt of her mother's, the one with the lovely patchwork, newly mended.

She had to shake her heard to bring herself back to the present.

“I wish that I could come with you and read you stories every night, sweet girl.” Heart swelling, Brigid slowly, carefully pulled her goddaughter up from the floor to hug her, and Katie’s thin arms linked tight around her middle. “But I need to go home and be with my da, and you need to go home and be with yours, yeah? He’ll get better at telling you stories – he just needs some more practice.”

When Katie didn’t respond, Brigid sighed, her heart pounding in her throat as she watched the girl blinked back her tears. “How about I come by and visit tomorrow – bring some leftover pudding? Would that be all right?”

“ _Katie!_ ”

“I guess,” she muttered, words muffled into the soft, thin fabric of Brigid’s nicest dress, the only one she’d ever bought herself from the shop after weeks of careful saving and not-so-subtly guiding potential buyers away.

She’d caught Tommy’s eyes on it – on _her_ – more than once over the course of the night, almost ever-present, almost like _before_. His look was more familiar than his hands, reminding her of the months before they’d begun stepping out together, when Martha would insist he was pining after her, when she would flush and catch him just as he looked away with a hint of red blooming on his own cheeks. It felt like the first time she’d opened up her front door to find him on the step, ready to take her on their first proper date, with shined shoes and freshly shorn hair.

She'd liked the game of back-and-forth, then, but not anymore. Not now. And she could feel his eyes at that moment, too, tracing the dark satin.

Looking up, Brigid found him slumped in the doorway of the lounge, hands in his pockets and eyes soft, a relaxation owed to the whiskey Arthur had opened up just an hour before. The liquor had sunk into his veins, loosened him up, and even though she was quite certain that Arthur had commandeered most of the bottle for himself, she couldn’t deny the whiskey’s calming effect. Prior to the first round of shots, Tommy had been dreadfully quiet, rigid and on edge, and she’d been nearly afraid to speak to him, unable to determine his mood.

Of course, they’d all politely ignored the way he flinched when James and Alice pulled open the first Christmas cracker, the loud pop echoing across the kitchen, even though they had been unable to miss it when he stood without warning, chair scraping the old wooden floor, and disappeared into the lounge.

But the discomfort seemed long past. Just the sight of him with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, his fringed swept to the side, had her belly twisting with something a lot like affection, and Brigid smiled when she asked, “They send you to find us?”

Tommy inclined his head, just once, his eyes light and a little blown from the whiskey. “They did.”

“All right, sweet girl, time to go.”

Running her thumb across Katie’s temple, Tommy’s eyes still heavy on her, Brigid took in the girl’s wet cheeks and red eyes, and tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. Katie was a picture of Martha, but it was easy enough – too easy – to think of a little girl with a head full of dark curls like her own, with Tommy’s bright, icy eyes. Somewhere deep inside her, a long-repressed emotion, a locked up memory, rattled at her walls like one of the ghouls in the kids’ stories, and in merely a moment, it was her sniffling, trying to hide her tears from her goddaughter, from _Tommy_.

She followed Katie out with a gentle hand on her shoulder to prevent another escape, and avoided Tommy’s eyes, certain that he would read her in a heartbeat if she did. And yet in the entryway, as they all bid John and the kids a happy Christmas, as she accepted one last hug from Katie and she instructed John to come by and get her if he needed help putting them to bed, she knew he was watching her. His eyes traced her like hesitant hands, careful, imploring, but it wasn’t until the door had snapped shut behind John, until Arthur had stumbled upstairs and Polly had snared Ada and Finn into helping her with the washing up, that he spoke. 

“Are you all right?” he said, voice low, and she forced herself to look away from him again, unable to take the churning in her belly.

Brigid’s eyes instead came to the coat rack, studying that old, threadbare coat of hers that had carried her through the worst of the war years, once as warm as an old friend, now worn thin from a-few-too-many rough winters. In the lounge, still neatly wrapped in paper and tucked into a gift box, was a new coat, velvet and lined with fur, perhaps as beautiful as any she’d ever seen and definitely more expensive, with a matching pair of gloves resting neat on top. Tommy had handed it to her with nary a word during their gift exchange, his fingers brushing hers just enough to send a shock up her spine, and she’d found the card marked _To Bridie_ in his neat, familiar handwriting. 

He’d merely hummed when she whispered _thank you_ , her hands running through the smooth fur.

Swallowing thickly, she nodded, more to herself than him. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The charged silence told her he didn’t quite believe her, and she stuttered to add, “Just always miss my mum around Christmastime, you know?”

“Yes.” She thought she heard him exhale, something almost sad, a sound that pricked at the hole where her heart was supposed to be, wide open and aching and raw. “Me too.”

Their mothers had died within a year of one another – his in the winter, hers in the following summer. If anything, it had strengthened his friendship with Patrick even more, just another reason for two poor boys from Small Heath to find comfort in one another’s antics. But it was too early to talk about Patrick, and Tommy never spoke of his mother, or her gin and ghosts. 

Brigid had never known the details of Bernadette Shelby’s final days, not until _that_ night – the night when a precocious and demanding five-year-old Finn threw a tantrum, pleading for his mother, screaming for his father, and a scorned Polly left the chaos their home had become for the warm comfort of the Garrison. Tommy had left, too, but only to draw Brigid out of her house three streets over, begging her to calm Finn down through panicked breaths of his own. He’d sobbed on her shoulder that night, his chest rattling and his tears hot, and she’d barely caught the words.

If she didn’t remember the sharp, visceral sting of panic, of despair, as she ran her hands through his hair, she would have thought it a dream.

The silence that night, after he’d finally quieted, had been as stilted as it was in that moment. Between them, the air was so thick she could have cut it with her switchblade, an almost anxiety that had become so familiar poisoning the air around him. For all that the liquor had calmed him, the silence chipped away at his composition once more.

She wondered how they were meant to be married if the mere mention of their traumas could tear down whatever fragile bond they’d begun to rebuild.

“I suppose I should go,” she murmured, words thick and awkward on her tongue. She thought of her father at home, dozing in that old chair of his by the fire. “It’s getting late.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, he nodded, almost imperceptible. “It is.”

It took only a single touch of her old coat, the one she reached for without a second thought, to remind her of the velvet one still packaged in the lounge. But she’d have to slip past him to reach it, and he seemed to fill the doorway, his shoulders broad in the starched white of his shirt, his eyes hooded from the alcohol and the late hour. 

“Could you walk me home?” she finally asked, heart hammering in her throat, her pulse heavy under her skin.

But she didn’t want him to walk her home, tucked arm-in-arm against the winter chill of Small Heath. She wanted his arms around her in the safety of Watery Lane, his hands in her hair because he’d always loved her hair. Brigid wanted to feel like the War had all been real – rather than some horrid nightmare from which she never awoke, unable to stop the death and sorrow that had crept between them – and that they might one day grow past it. 

“I could.” Except he shifted to lean against the doorjamb, and his eyes had slipped from her face to the line of her throat. “Or you could stay.”

Her answer came out little above a whisper. “I could.”

And Brigid felt like a blushing girl again, unable to look away or understand why Thomas Shelby was interested in her, unsure of what to say or where to put her hands. The first time he’d drawn her into his bed, she’d been a trembling mess – not in the least because of the frost on the windows – and giggling to cover up her nerves. The first time he ran his hand down the curve of her naked waist, she squirmed away with a squeal, always too ticklish for her own good.

“Will you?”

“Of course.”

But from the very first time he kissed her, it had never even been a question.

As Brigid climbed up the creaky stairs of the Shelby home, her mind racing, Tommy’s hand grazed her lower back and ignited a heat somewhere deep and locked-up inside her. The low din of the kitchen, where Polly, Ada, and Finn were finishing with the washing, followed them as they ascended, and yet she found herself holding her breath, like all those times they’d snuck in long after the rest of the Shelbys had turned in for the night, and she’d feared a single hitch of breath or creak on the stairs might wake Polly. She thought he might be dodging the loose steps too.

And yet his bedroom, the old creaky bed and the dim green wallpaper that had been her constant for four years, felt foreign. An empty glass, the bottom sticky with old whiskey, sat on the small bedside table, and the bed sheets were pulled tight – quite out-of-character, but a side effect of Army life, she supposed. His hat was hung neatly on the door’s hook, and Brigid could have laughed at the order of it all if she weren’t so nervous. It was almost funny to think that, four years prior, the most she’d had to worry about in his bedroom was stumbling across his cap on the floor and slicing up her foot.

But now, a sweet, cloying scent hung in the air, something she couldn’t quite place, and her stomach flipped as she prayed it wasn’t another woman’s perfume.

When the door had latched behind them, impossibly loud in their tense silence, Tommy cleared his throat. “You’ve – there are some things of yours, in the bottom drawer. A nightgown, I think.” 

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, flushing hot in the face. “I thought I’d cleared out everything.”

She’d needed a case to get everything back to her own home, marveling at how, little by little, her things had migrated to Watery Lane. Her position had been little different than that of John's kids, in truth – just another almost-orphan seeking shelter with Polly Gray.

Catching his eye, she found him placing a cigarette between his lips, deft fingers searching for his matchbox in his trouser pockets, and couldn’t miss the tension in his shoulders, or the way his eyes slipped away just as she met them.

And for a moment, she thought he might offer to let her leave them. For the future.

But he merely inhaled sharply, shaking out the lit match, and said, awkward, around the cigarette, "They'd made it in Pol's wash." A hazy cloud of smoke overtook his face as he let out a long, slow breath. 

Ignoring the heat in her cheeks, Brigid ducked to his wardrobe. Inside, she found a small, neatly folded pile of her clothing, and on top was an old nightgown, loose in the collar from years of use, frayed at the hem. Another thing she hadn’t had the time or energy to mend around working long hours and writing him letters.

The fabric was thin under her touch, and as she considered the cold fog that had settled on Tommy’s small bedroom window, she feared that she might be too chilled to sleep.

She hoped that he might keep her warm.

Almost nervous, Brigid threw a look over her shoulder, unsure even then if she should bother asking him to avert his eyes, but he was already facing away, slipping his suspenders past his shoulders. Heart thrumming under her skin, fingers clumsy, Brigid stood to undo the buttons of her own dress, to kick off her boots, with a low, swooping sensation in her belly. Other than the soft fumbling of clothing, the only sound was his constant inhales and exhales, and the familiar scent of tobacco wafted over her, settling in her lungs but failing to calm her racing mind.

He had invited her to stay, guided her to his bedroom with a hand on her back, and yet Brigid didn’t know how to tell if _this_ Tommy wanted her. Before the War, he’d never been shy in his affections, with wandering hands that would sneak lower and lower; the reverent way he’d trace his lips across her cheekbone, the line of her jaw, her neck; the heat she would find in his eyes. For all his rough edges, Tommy had always been a surprisingly intimate person, and she’d never felt more desired, more loved, than when he was wrapped around her and _inside_ her and would press their foreheads together. Now, as the nightgown slipped over her bare skin, and she watched him in only his pants, finishing the cigarette with his back still turned, she felt like she had that very first time – awkward and trembling, butterflies in her stomach, full of too many words she didn’t know how to say.

Swallowing, chiding herself for acting like a child – she wasn’t seventeen anymore, bloody hell – Brigid joined him by the window, eyes falling to the empty street below, strangely bright for the time of night. Christmas candles still flickered in neighboring windows, and the clouds hung heavy and grey, low in the sky and reflecting the shining streetlamps. It looked like snow. They’d woken to frost the past three mornings, the wind bitter, and Brigid was ready for it to finally come.

Inexplicably, she thought of her father again, hoping that they had enough groceries at home to last them for a few days, should the shops not open. Another part of her hoped she would wake the next morning to bright, glittering snow, her toes cold and her nose warm against Tommy’s throat, and that they could pretend, just for a little while, that the rest of the world had stopped.

“Might I?” she asked, jittery fingers already open to accept the last third of his cigarette. And when he passed it off to her without another word, she drew in a long drag, eyes slipping closed, as the smoke settled her nervous stomach.

“Do you need help with your hair?”

She’d forgotten about her hair, as well as the long, skinny pins that held her chignon in place, and Brigid was nodding before she even realized it. With her eyes still closed, she lost herself in the feel of his fingers in her hair, searching for the pins with which he was well familiar himself. Too many times, he’d attempted to run his fingers through her hair, only to come across a long-lost one. They clattered as he dropped them on the windowsill, as she slowly finished his cigarette, something like a calm washing over her.

Scalp aching as her hair fell, she sighed as his gentle fingers sorted through the thick tangles, and when he brushed the side of her neck, she shivered. He’d done as much before, usually with soft, teasing kisses to her neck while she giggled and squirmed away. This time, his mood was subdued, his hands almost diligent, and Brigid stood, like stone, her heart in her throat.

His voice was low in her ear when he spoke, still sorting through the snarls in her hair. “Have you thought of cutting it?”

“No,” she muttered, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray perched precariously on the edge of the windowsill. With a twinge of something like timidity, she continued, “Would you prefer it that way? Short?”

All of the girls were cutting their hair, even faster than they were hemming their skirts, and while Brigid was quite glad to have her feet free from the old-fashioned petticoat, she had yet to find the courage to part with her hair. She thought of Ada’s sleek bob, and the glossy hair the girls at the Garrison sported, and drew her bottom lip between her teeth. 

Matter of fact, he responded, “No. You know I’ve always liked your hair.” And with a deep breath, he slid his rough, calloused hand down the chilled skin of her shoulder as her stomach and heart clenched. “Let’s go to bed, yeah?”

Brigid didn’t see him back away, but she felt the absence of his warmth behind her and the gooseflesh he’d left behind on her shoulder. And yet she still didn’t know what he _wanted_. His eyes were caged, his movements careful, all of his telltales hidden. In the reflection of the window, his figure threw back the sheets, and she heard him as he settled in, fumbling with the sheets, the bedframe creaking underneath him, as if nothing were amiss. 

“Bridie?” His voice was soft, almost worried.

Heart in her throat, she murmured, “Sorry.”

Casting one final look out at the low clouds, Brigid shuffled over to the bed, a shiver wracking her frame as she crawled underneath the quilt. And she’d been in bed next to Tommy Shelby more times than she could count, the crook of his shoulder more familiar than her own pillow – and more often than not, they hadn’t been sleeping. But now he was stiff next to her, his arms flat, still, by his sides, and he jerked his cold foot back when it brushed hers.

She wanted to curl into him, to press her lips to his throat and feel his skin against hers. She wanted it so bad that she ached, her heart pounding in her throat and ears and fingertips, feeling like the rawness burning in her chest might swallow her whole.

Yet, a thought came unbidden to her mind – Tommy, knees pulled to his chest in a dank, muddy trench, boots still tied tight, that old picture of her gripped in his hands.

No wonder he didn’t reach out to her. He was probably still trying to remember what it was like to sleep in a warm bed, let alone with someone else.

“Goodnight, Tom,” she whispered, her voice almost impossibly loud in the quiet of his bedroom. Then, taking a chance, she turned her head, pressing a quick, gentle kiss to his shoulder. “I love you.”

His voice was low, almost gruff when he responded. “Goodnight.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Brigid tried not to recall the weeks since his return, unwilling to confirm her own suspicion and yet entirely certain that he had yet to say he loved her back. She’d become accustomed to the sickly sweet smell in the air, and yet as she turned her back on him to curl into a ball, Brigid found herself once again hoping he’d not found himself in the arms of another, even if only for physical comfort.

But it didn’t take long for her to drift off, the weariness that had settled into her bones sinking down and drawing her with it. Lost somewhere between the haze of sleep and the disquiet of Tommy’s bedroom, Brigid realized the clouds must have broken, because icy rain began dancing against the window, echoing, quiet and even, around the room. It masked the sound of his breathing, and when she allowed herself to fall further into sleep, she could have been anywhere, with anyone. Truly, for the first time in weeks, she found herself at ease.

At least until she awoke, groggy and confused, hot and sweaty, with her back pressed flush against his chest. The room was dim, pitched in a too-bright light from the reflection of what could only be snow through the open window. Tommy was muttering behind her, his arm locked almost painfully around her middle, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her belly like knives.

“Tom, what the hell,” she murmured, eyes drooping once more. “Stop that.”

But he only constricted her further, lips fluttering against the back of her neck in a way that would have sent a shiver down her spine if she weren’t profoundly exasperated. Sighing, frustration coiling in her stomach, she pinched his forearm and tried to break his hold.

“Tommy.”

His response was unintelligible, pitched high and almost panicked, and with a heavy heart, Brigid’s irritation slipped away. She’d heard the sound frequently enough in the hospital on her nightly rounds.

He was having a bad dream.

Polly had mentioned them, whispered to Brigid about the number of times she’d awoken to his frightened shouts from down the hall, or padded downstairs in the early morning haze to find him slumped and pale at the dining table over a forgotten glass of whiskey. She’d seen the dark, bruised circles under his eyes herself, had known he wasn’t sleeping well, if at all, but it was different to wake up with his trembling arms tight around her. 

Running her hand along the taut cord of muscle in his arm, hoping to soothe, she murmured, “C’mon, Tom, wake up.”

When he merely tightened his grip again, Brigid released a frustrated sigh, attempting to roll over in his grip, to break his hold and face him –

Except he sprang into action, his eyes wide open and dark with a terror unlike any she’d ever seen, and then his forearm fell, heavy and tight, against her throat. 

 _“Tommy – ”_ she shrieked, hands slipping against his hot, sweaty skin.

He merely bore down harder, his lips shaking, his eyes still locked on hers, and yet it was like he could not truly _see_ her. As she gasped, hands slipping against his slick skin, she felt herself go lightheaded, her eyes fluttering, and he felt massive against her, the entire weight of him heavy on her chest while her lungs strained, fighting for air, and her frenzied feet kicked the quilt down as she sought for his shins, his cock, anything that might buy her a breath.

Brigid’s heart was in her throat, blood rushing in her ears, fighting for a hold against him, until _smack!_

Her palm collided with his nose, the sharp sound ringing throughout the quiet room, and that was when he scrambled away with a cry, his cheeks and chest flushed with dread. Heaving and coughing, Brigid scrambled upright, lungs begging for air, as panicked tears welled in her eyes. Around the oppressive blackness spotting her vision, she saw him with his palms pressed tight against his eyes, gasping for his own breath. The swelling tide of fright threatened to swamp her, to pull her under, but Brigid forced herself to swallow the lump in her aching throat.

 _He was dreaming. Calm down, god damn it, calm down._  

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, his voice pinched higher than she’d ever heard it. “’m sorry, _fuck_ , I can still smell the mud.”

“It’s all right, love.” Swiping at her tears, Brigid forced herself to look at him, to mask her heaving chest, despite the fact that her mind was still racing, her neck throbbing. “It’s fine – _I’m_ fine.”

Hands still pressed tight, he was shaking his head, shrunken into himself, clearly stuck somewhere between his bedroom and France. And she couldn’t even imagine the things that he had seen, the things he had _done_ , the mud he’d shoveled and the bombs he’d planted and the men he’d shot, and _Patrick_ –

But she wanted to know, her heart aching for him, her hands itching to reach out. She knew him, knew that Tommy was like to bury himself under the weight of it all, that he needed someone to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him and promise to help him bear it. She’d spent three weeks circling him like an anxious dog, as if waiting to be kicked, or for him to reach out, but perhaps it was time for her to reach in.

“Tom,” she said, inching closer to him as trepidation built in her heart, “do you want to talk about it? I’m not hurt, I promise.”

“No.”

“You don’t – ” Hesitant, Brigid stopped herself for fear of shaming him, of him firmly locking the doors to his heart and mind that she had managed to pry back open. “They say it’s normal to have bad dreams. I have them too, sometimes.”

She’d had them for _weeks_ – after.

Polly said it was normal.

But Tommy scoffed, his head still limp in his hands. “They weren’t in France. And neither were you.”

Bristling, something like scorn settling into her heart, Brigid moved away from him to rest against the cold metal headboard, icy fingers sneaking under her nightgown, raising gooseflesh on her skin.

She might not have been in France, but she'd seen the men who had been, the men the war-torn nation had chewed up and spat back across the Channel. Men without limbs, without eyes, without faces at all, really – and worst of all, those without their wits.

“It wasn’t like it was easy here, you know,” she bit out, nervous fingers betraying her steely words as they twisted into her nightgown. “We never had enough rations, what with Finn and all of John’s kids. Always getting month-old news, never sure if any of you lot were even still alive. And Martha passing.”

“Forgive me,” he began, something almost like that cocky drawl she used to love so much tingeing his voice. Now, it only turned her stomach. “If I don’t have much sympathy.”

Like she'd been smacked, Brigid leaned back against the cool headboard, trying to put as much space between them as she could. “You loved Martha,” she spat, almost accusatory. “She was your brother's wife, as good as a sister to you and me. She made us – ”

“She died in her sleep. That's more than can be said for a lot of them.”

Brigid wanted to leave, tears pricking at her eyes like little knives. She wanted to thunder down the stairs, find her old coat and traipse home in the snow with chattering teeth, perhaps even catch pneumonia to make him regret his mockery. She wanted to tell John, let him know exactly what his brother thought of his dear lamented wife, and see _exactly_ where that landed Thomas Shelby.

So maybe it was the hot, angry sting in her heart, or the throbbing of her neck, that brought the sarcasm to her voice. “Maybe so. I’m _sure_ nothing that happened here can possibly compare to France, but – ”

But her breath caught in her throat. Before Brigid could stop them, tears, remnants of her panic, slipped down her flushed cheeks, her mind stuck on sweet Martha, and her big brown eyes and her even bigger heart. “Martha was _family_ , Tommy, whether you feel it in that hardened heart of yours or not. She helped me through more than anyone else ever has.”

Brigid remembered those old dreams – always bloody. Waking up with blood on her hands, in her sheets, coloring the water of the washbasin. She was always cold in the dreams too, like she had been that morning she showed up on the doorstep of Watery Lane, shivering in her frayed coat with blue lips and pale cheeks. 

“Oh, enlighten me. I’m sure that – that working in a dress shop and going a little hungry was really – ”

And he looked at her for the first time, those piercing blue eyes cutting right through her in his dimly lit bedroom.

“I lost our baby, Thomas.”

She had hoped their baby would have his eyes.

But that was before she woke up to a bloody nightgown, before she had retched into the washbasin and nearly crumpled with the force of the pains in her belly. Before she stumbled into Martha’s outstretched arms in the kitchen of the Shelby home, her sobs sharp and violent, and been led, barely-coherent, upstairs to his bedroom – _this_ bedroom – and away from the prying, scared eyes of the children. Before she had finally been forced by Polly to eat some toast, to drink some tea, lest she faint from the shock. Before she had lain in his bed and just kept bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. 

“You what?” Tommy looked aghast, pale and statue-still in the moonlight, his hands still trembling.

Eyes burning, Brigid forced herself to draw a breath, to hide the hitch of hysteria that colored her voice when she responded, “It was the October after you left. I must have been eight, ten weeks gone. Pol – Pol says it’s normal, that early.”

There was more she could say – more she wanted to say. About how she’d woken up weeks prior, nauseous and weak, and told herself that it was just a sickness. About how she didn’t even notice her cycle was late until it was _too_ late, and the terrified, hushed conversation she’d had with Martha about what to do, her friend’s big brown eyes as solemn as Katie’s had been just that evening. About the dozen letters, addressed neatly to him, that she had started and scratched out and thrown away until she finally got it _just right_.

And she’d ended up burning that one.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tommy whispered, his voice cracking, almost like a child. “I would – I would have…”

She’d only told that mean priest at her mother’s church, whispered through tears in the confessional, and he’d said it was God’s punishment for sleeping around like a common whore – the old cunt.

And so Brigid shrugged, feeling almost hollow, because the raw, rough edges had long worn smooth. What had once been a gaping wound was now no more than a slight throb of pain, nothing more than a memory. Telling him, then, would have made it real. It would have made her confront the quiet voice in the back of her mind, almost sly, whispering, _You’re better off this way, don’t you know?_

She dealt with that guilt on a daily basis. She didn’t need it from Tommy.

“I figured you had more important things to worry about,” she murmured, crossing her arms over her pounding chest. “Seems like I was right.”

The silence between them was cruel, crawling into Brigid’s heart and making a home in its cracks. A fatigue washed over her, reminding her of her sore muscles, her aching throat, and she wanted nothing more than to be at home – _her_ home – away from him and his room and the bed that she had bled out their baby on, tucked under her mother’s quilt with her father’s familiar snoring in the next room.

So she turned, sinking back under Tommy’s thin blanket with her eyes tightly shut, thinking that maybe, just maybe, if she pretended, she might be able to drift back off. But it was then as she settled in, in that cruel silence, that he finally found his voice.

“I would have married you,” he said, and her heart hurt again. “First chance I got.”

Curled on her side, shivering as the cold seeped from her bones, Brigid said, “Then I suppose it’s good you didn’t get one.”

It seemed he had no response, none other than a slow, heavy sigh. And even though her eyes were closed, sleep evaded Brigid as she lay there, hyperaware of his presence – his every move, his breathing, the scent of him in the sheets. A tiny part of her, deep down, hoped that he would crawl back under the quilt with her, but when he slowly stood, as if she were asleep, and padded out of the room, she wasn’t surprised. With the soft _snick_ of the door, she finally released the breath she’d been holding in her aching chest, and maybe a few tears as well.

It was good that she never told him, Brigid reassured herself around a watery sniff. She’d spent enough of the wartime thinking about their babe, and whether they would have had her nose or his, and how old they would have been on any given day, whether they would have inherited her head for numbers or his smooth tongue – or perhaps both, and how dangerously charming would they have been then?

She eventually nodded off, her dreams filled with mud and blood and his hands against her throat, and when she startled awake more than once to his freezing, snow-lit bedroom, it was never to find him next to her.


	4. iv.

The last day of the year had dawned bright and cold, the weak sunlight filtering in through heavy curtains, cutting through the smoke of Small Heath, warming the muddy snow that still clung to the curbs and shadows. Dodging puddles and slick patches of ice, Brigid made her way to Watery Lane early that morning, her home empty and almost unbearable after her father left for his shift at the B.S.A. with a quick kiss to her forehead. He had been thrilled to get his old job as shift supervisor back, but until his first week’s pay came through, their money was still dreadfully thin. She’d spoken with Polly and a stone-faced Tommy about needing more hours in the betting shop, and so they should have expected her.

Yet standing before Number Six, three knocks in, the door had yet to open. With a huff that fogged the air around her and a quick look over her shoulder at the empty street, Brigid dug through her bag, seeking the spare key that Polly had long since passed to her. It was when the smooth metal was finally under her fingertips that the door burst open.

With a startled gasp, Brigid peeked up through her messy fringe and cap to find a red-faced Polly, still in her dressing gown and yet already taking long drags from a cigarette.

“Good morning,” she said, almost awkward, stuffing her hands back into the ermine-lined pockets of her new coat. “I’m sorry – did I wake you?”

It was a question of courtesy. Brigid had known Polly Gray long enough to know her red cheeks and pursed lips meant that she was already too furious to have just woken up, no matter how early it was.

“My God, you do look like a proper woman in that coat, don’t you?”

A cool breeze swept about her knees, sneaking under the coat’s heavy hem, and yet Brigid felt hot under her collar, unsure and wavering under Polly’s almost accusatory stare. She still felt like an imposter in it, to be sure, the soft velvet nicer than anything she had ever owned and certainly putting her plain black skirt and scuffed boots to shame. But when she'd stared at herself in the mirror, long and hard, that first time she pulled it on, Brigid felt almost respectable. Fine velvet would do that, she supposed.

And yet Tommy had barely spoken with her since Christmas, since she had cried herself back to sleep and woken up alone, so the coat was about all she had of him, and she wasn’t like to leave it alone.

“I can’t decide if that’s a compliment,” she said, tongue-tied, a flush rising to her cheeks. 

Polly must have fought with Tommy (again) just minutes prior – nothing else would incite such acrimony from the woman who had taken her in all those years ago, who kept her fed and working when all Brigid wanted to do was write letters and pull more shifts at the hospital. She had never been made to wait on the Shelby doorstep. Now, though, it seemed an offer to come inside from the cold seemed far from Polly’s train of thought as she sniffed, taking another long drag of her cigarette. Brigid shifted her weight from one frozen foot to another, watching as the older woman exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“Used the shop’s money to buy it, as if I wouldn’t notice – as if I wasn’t in charge of this whole bloody business for five years.” Her dark eyes flicked to Brigid’s own before trailing down the line of her coat once more. “I won’t tell you how many pounds. It’ll make you hate him.”

Brigid grit her teeth, unable to hide the flame of annoyance in her chest. A flame that sadly wasn’t enough to keep her warm. “I’ll give you back the money. Just as soon as I have it.”

But she had to swallow around the lump in her throat, just the thought making her heart and mind race. How many more hours would she need, and with the groceries, too – god, how much could it have been? _Ermine_ , for fuck’s sake, it was probably worth more than her house –

“No, you will not.” With a scoff, Polly stepped aside to reveal the darkened parlor, all of the curtains still drawn tight. “Come in, then. I’ve just laid out breakfast.”

Inside, Polly continued on to the kitchen, trailed by a cloud of smoke, but Brigid found herself stuck in the entryway as if there was pitch on her heels, and her nervous eyes searched every corner, every nook and cranny, for Tommy. He’d been so silent with her, so distant, that when Brigid lay in bed at night and let the day catch up with her, she could hardly breathe. No matter how many times she assured herself that he didn’t blame her, the insidious thought kept sneaking in like a draft she couldn’t quite seal up, ripping open wounds she’d long thought scarred over.

She dreamt of blood every night. Sometimes her own. Sometimes Patrick’s. Sometimes, she awoke so short of breath, drenched in a cold sweat, that she could have sworn Tommy’s forearm had been against her throat just a second prior. But her room was always cold, and her bed was always empty. He'd even pitched pebbles at her window once or twice before the war, but Brigid didn't even bother listening, now. 

Nervous fingers searching for something with which to occupy themselves, she latched the lock behind her and stooped to collect the morning’s mail. What had appeared at first glance to be a sizeable pile was, in fact, merely a letter or two atop a heavy, parchment-wrapped package addressed to Tommy, and as Brigid stood, tucking the letters under her arm, she ran a slow, hesitant finger across the parchment.

The king’s stamp shone, blood red, in the top corner.

A package all the way from London – for Tommy?

Pulse in her ears, Brigid wracked her brains, searching for a reason why a bookmaker and racketeer would be of any interest to the king. If anything, he should be sending an arrest warrant. And yet in the kitchen, Polly was slamming cabinets, jostling around the chairs and jam jars and teakettle as if nothing were amiss. Above her head, Brigid could hear the rest of the family stirring – Arthur’s staggered footsteps in his bedroom, Ada bickering with Finn through the door of the loo – just like every morning. And so with her heart in her throat, Brigid followed.

Her eyes were stuck to the parchment as she approached the kitchen table, tossing the letters down without a care. The urge to rip it open was so overwhelming that Brigid, her fingers itching to slip under the neat paper, almost hoped for Tommy to appear.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” Polly, ever perceptive, had fixed her with a sharp-eyed stare as stubbed out her cigarette to instead pour a cuppa.

“A package,” she replied, her tongue heavy. “For Tommy.”

Polly’s teacup quaked in the saucer as she set it down, and her face had gone ashen. “Is that – oh, for Christ’s sake – ”

But before Brigid could interject, before she could ask any questions or pester Polly for her knowledge, the older woman had reached over to snatch the package from her. Head spinning, Brigid stumbled backward with a flush on her cheeks, burning hot from the roaring fire in the kitchen hearth, the heat of her coat, the almost hard look in Polly’s eyes.

“Bridie – ”

“What’s going on?”

Dodging’s Polly’s fingers once more, Brigid whipped around to find Tommy standing in the open doorway to the shop. And for as incensed as Polly had been, she would have expected Tommy to show signs of their disagreement as well, yet he looked nothing beyond cool and collected, his starched white shirt still pressed and neat, gun neatly buckled in the holster around his shoulders and winking in the firelight. With his hair slightly mussed, he looked fresh from a night’s sleep, relaxed and almost cocky in that way that had been so familiar on him before the war, and it made Brigid’s heart ache, her stomach flutter.

“Nothing,” Polly said from over Brigid’s shoulder, and she never quite managed to keep the lie out of her voice around Tommy. For all that she had acted his mother, they were, in so many ways, equals. “Misaddressed package, is all.”

She felt Polly's bird-like fingers press lightly against her back as if in warning. Whatever was on the other side of that parchment was not something Polly wanted him to see, and timidity churned in Brigid's belly. Her mouth opened as if to speak of its own accord, hesitating, closing once more, while Tommy's cool eyes looked them both up and down.

Brigid wasn’t quite sure what came over her, in retrospect. Perhaps it was the unimpressed look in his eyes, the way they flicked to Brigid without a second thought as if seeking the truth, or the way that he’d laughed, just weeks ago, when he told her that he picked her because she had sense. Maybe it was the heavy weight of his ring on her finger. He had yet to say he loved her back, but he had made it clear that he trusted her to tell him the truth. And no matter the fact that they’d hardly spoken for a week, her heart and bones and soul still ached with love when she looked at him.

She’d said she would always be on his side, and she meant it.

So before she could even think, she blurted, “It’s yours. From the king."

But if she’d expected him to be intrigued, she was wrong. In the stifling silence of the kitchen, his curious expression fell flat, and he merely reached into his pockets for a cigarette, the way he always did now when he was nervous.

When he finally muttered, “The king, eh?” around a long drag, it was with a thinly veiled tremble in his voice, and that turned her stomach, lighting a fire in her heart.

They both clearly knew something that she didn’t, the bastards – they way they looked at the package as if it were a grenade with its pin pulled, ready to blow. “What is it, then?” she pressed, fingers sneaking under the parchment. “What does the bloody king want with Thomas fucking Shelby?”

He stood, still as a statue, with the light from the fire dancing in his cheekbones, eyes impassive. “Open it then,” he said, taking another drag of his cigarette.

“Bridie.” Polly’s hand, once so comforting, came to her elbow, as if to coax the package away once more, and Brigid could only shrug her away, mouth twisting in discomfort.

She dropped the package to the table with a heavy _clunk_ that rattled the china, echoing throughout the kitchen and even the house, which had seemingly fallen too quiet for the morning hour. The parchment gave way easy with the weight of their eyes, icy blue and burning brown, on her, revealing a box of blue velvet and a heavy letter. The letter she swiped aside to instead snap open the box – almost like an eager child on Christmas day, except her stomach was churning, and she’d never quite dreaded the contents of a package the way she did at that moment.

So, in a way, it was almost a relief to find two polished, glittering medals situated on a pillow of silk.

One ribbon was crimson with a navy stripe, the other navy with crimson and white stripes, but both sat fat and heavy with king's crowned profile facing up. Reverent, Brigid ran a thumb over one of them, softly, feeling every fine ridge under her skin. The metal was still cool from sitting in the doorway. “Medals?”

She flipped the one in hand over to find  _FOR DISTINGUISHED CONDUCT IN THE FIELD_ inscribed on its reverse. The next question was already on her lips, but no matter how long they spent apart, it seemed, Tommy could still read her mind.

“For gallantry,” he drawled, lifting his cigarette back to his lips for a long, slow drag.

It was then that he shrugged, almost uncomfortable, rolling the shoulder with matching bullet scars on the front and back. And it suddenly made so much sense – the bullet. The bullet that he’d taken dragging a shell-shocked Danny Owen out from underneath the godforsaken French dirt right after they blew the Somme to hell, the bullet that had caused him to nearly bleed out in the ensuing offensive against the German flank.

She’d sobbed when Polly shoved the Army’s telegram into her hands, expecting the worst, and had collapsed against this very kitchen table when she read the words _full recovery expected_.

“That’s…” Pausing to chew on her lip, searching for something, _anything_ , Brigid faltered. “That’s lovely.”

Cursing herself – _what a foolish thing to say_ – Brigid couldn’t help but wince. And yet Tommy merely exhaled, stepping closer, and the cloud of tobacco smoke enveloped her, thick and heavy and calming. It was, for a moment, as if he didn’t hear what she said. At least until he snatched up the pair of medals, shoving them into the pocket of his trousers, and began to stride across the kitchen to the parlor.

To the door.

“It’s horse shit,” he said, barely audible, and then he was swinging his coat around his shoulders.

Before any of them could speak, the door slammed behind him, and the whole house, creaking and groaning, protested. With him gone, it was if a breath had been released – footsteps once again padded above their heads, and Polly collapsed into a chair at the scrubbed old table.

Stunned, Brigid turned, almost trembling as an unidentifiable yet increasingly familiar emotion welled up inside her, to meet Polly’s eyes. And like a dam ready to burst, the way that one always does when faced with the pity and understanding of a mother’s gaze, Brigid felt herself shudder. 

Except Polly was waving her off with both hands, a pinched look on her face. “Well – go after him!”

She turned without a word, head swimming, tears brimming on her lower lashes as shame and guilt churned in her stomach and turned her nauseous. She didn’t let it slow her down as she dashed out the door, dodging a muddy pile of snowmelt, and shivered as a sharp wind swept down the lane to stir the fur around her cheeks. He’d already made it three blocks down, marching with a purpose, and Brigid watched him toss his cigarette into a puddle, desperately picking up her pace as a sour, raw feeling opened up in her heart.

She didn’t like feeling like a fucking dog, trailing after him and begging for scraps of his affection no matter how many times he kicked her, and it wasn’t the first time she’d felt that way since he returned. It didn’t seem that it would ever become any easier.

Two blocks and a right turn later, when Brigid had finally managed to gain on him, she realized that he was heading to Charlie’s yard – that old haunt of his, the place where he’d found so much peace brushing the horses when the shop and his family became just _too much_. He’d kissed her for the first time there, one late afternoon with the orange, smoke-tinted sunlight of Small Heath playing in the shadows of his cheeks, after they’d snuck one of Charlie’s horses for the day and he’d handed her the reins and told her to _go fast, love_. When he had finally managed to rear the horse to a stop in some field outside Birmingham, she’d slid off immediately, stumbling in her skirts and laughing, before his lips could find hers, but by the time they’d made it back to Small Heath, she was done playing hard to get.

It was a warm memory, a sharp contrast to the crisp morning, to the pitch-black water of the Cut, strangely still for the time of morning. With Charlie and Curly missing, the yard seemed frozen in time.

 _Kerplunk!_  

Until one of the medals sliced through the calm, shattering the mirrored surface of the canal, and sunk into the dark to join the filth at the bottom. 

“Tommy!”

He turned, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, and held out the other, almost as if it were a peace offering. “Do you want to toss the other one?”

“No,” she said with her heart in her throat, watching with something like desperation. “What are you doing, Tom?”

The space between them seemed as vast as no man’s land, and perhaps just as treacherous. His response was a long, impassive look, empty hand twitching near his pocket as if to fish for a match, before turning back to the water. Faced with his broad shoulders, the familiar cut of that long black coat, Brigid crossed her arms over herself, trembling from the chill and the panic that swelled up inside her, threatening to swallow her whole. The second medal, shimmering in the weak morning light, disappeared into the dark of the canal just as fast as the first.

Feeling small, twisting his ring around her finger, she watched him as he stared out at the misty canal, as the water stilled once more. For a long while, he didn’t move, as if frozen in time himself, and when he did, it was to reach into his pocket for a match to light the cigarette still in his mouth with little fanfare. When he rolled his shoulder once more, Brigid sniffed as that telltale burning stung at her eyes, shifting her weight, pressing her shaking fingers to her cheeks to will the tears away.

She was so bloody sick of crying – how could she possibly have any tears left?

Gruff, with his back still turned to her, he muttered, “What?”

And she could have smacked him, pain and anger and guilt beginning to boil in her stomach. Swiping at her cheeks, Brigid stepped closer, feeling rueful and raw, even though he wouldn’t turn to meet her gaze, even though he hadn’t touched her or spoken to her truthfully in days, even though she had exposed her deepest secret to him, laid herself bare for his judgment.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, the words clumsy on her tongue, the tongue that she had been biting for weeks – for _years_ , it felt. “What the fuck is wrong, Tommy?”

A tear slipped down her cheek then, and she could feel his gaze when his eyes shot to her, just for a moment. Even before the War, Tommy had had little patience for tears.

In the long moment it took him to respond, the only sound between them the distant din of the B.S.A., Brigid moved closer, within a foot, her lips pursed and eyes hard. He swallowed before responding.

“It’s not like I deserve them,” he finally said, and for the first time ever, Brigid thought that _maybe_ , just maybe, Thomas Shelby sounded uncertain. The syllables had wavered, tumbling out unguarded like water over a stoney riverbed, continuing just as frenetic. “What have they given them to me for? For taking a bullet? Lots of other men took bullets, and they didn’t get no medals. Patrick didn’t get no fucking medals, yeah? All they got was muddy, unmarked graves in some corner of France. Some didn’t even get that.” 

And after weeks of hoping that he would finally talk about the war, about the tunnels and the trenches and the blood, that he would reveal his cross and let her help him bear it, Brigid found that words wouldn’t come. After she had stumbled to a stop in a darkened street, sobbing and gasping, and begged him to just fucking _talk to her_ , to not erase Patrick like a figment of their imaginations, just the sound of her brother’s name drew the breath right out of her lungs.

And if she’d learned one thing since Tommy had returned, it was that he didn’t want pity. And least of all, it seemed, did he want hers.

When she didn’t speak, he scoffed, turning back to the water, and Brigid realized that she was shaking, her eyes blurry as she studied the furrow of his brow, the cut of his cheekbones and the hard line of his jaw. The metal of his ring bit at her skin where she twisted and twisted. And so she wasn’t sure how much time passed between them in the cold expanse of Charlie’s yard before he finally turned to look at her, any and all emotions guarded behind those glacial eyes. 

“Got nothing to say?” he said, voice too loud for the quiet of the morning. “Since when does Brigid Murphy have nothing to say?”

The force of his words startled a bitter laugh from her lips. “Oh, forgive me for being rather alarmed. I can’t say I expected you to – ”

“I slept with a whore in Paris.” Painstakingly casual, he flicked the ash from his cigarette. “Suppose you didn’t expect that either.”

He might as well have punched her in the stomach, given the way that her breath left her, given the way she stumbled backward. His ring burned, heavy, on her finger, while her mind spiraled down, down into that pitch-dark pit of loathing and doubt. She'd always known she wasn't good enough – clever enough, ambitious enough, radiant enough – to hold a candle to Thomas Shelby. Plenty of the other girls in Small Heath had muttered as much behind her back for years. And yet –

He’d kissed her ring when he saw it at the train station. He had held her close in front of her mother’s church and promised it was only the thought of her that got him through the thick of war. He’d – 

“Tommy – ”

“I was on leave last year for a few days – didn’t have enough time to get back home. Went to Paris with a couple of the boys, and they dragged me to the whorehouse. I figured I’d just find the nearest pub, but I didn’t. She only spoke enough English to get me into her bed, but she had dark hair like – ”

Brigid smacked him. Hard.

Her heart rattling in her chest, face and eyes burning, she gasped in time with his shocked step backward, watched as he felt the bright bloom of blood along the cut of his jaw where the stone of her ring, turned backward from her fidgeting, had made contact. And even though her hand was smarting, when he drew his bloodstained fingers away, she felt vindicated.

“How dare you?” Her voice came out calm, flat, despite that her insides were rocking like the deck of a storm-caught ship, tossing and turning and churning. 

How dare he stand there after weeks of awkwardly dancing around her like she was an old acquaintance, after weeks of pretending like she hadn’t given him her whole life and heart and soul, and say such a thing?

The angry flick of his eyes, the clench of his jaw, revealed his question before she gave him the time to ask.

“I don’t deserve this,” she forced out, air scarce and lungs aching, “ _any_ of it. I didn’t spend four years looking after _your_ business, watching Martha die and letting our _godchildren_ run me ragged every day for you to treat me like this. I didn’t twiddle this goddamn ring around my finger and write you a letter every other day for four _fucking_ years for you to stand there and tell me about how you put your cock in some French slag because she had hair like mine.”

She could have gone on, could have screamed out four years’ worth of anger and frustration and sorrow in a vain attempt to solicit any emotion from his still, impassive face. But instead, she found herself trembling, and wrapped her arms tight around herself as if trying to hold in her very heart, burning red hot with anger and shame. Brigid could barely look at him – the still-gaunt hollows of his cheeks an unwelcome reminder that he, too, had suffered – unable to picture him without the arms of some beautiful French whore around him. Instead, she focused on the smoke and ash billowing from the B.S.A. just over his head.

She’d read about Pompeii, once – that old Roman city plastered in volcanic ash, with all of its citizens encased within. In the month that Tommy had been home, she found herself feeling much the same: frozen in time, on the cusp of something destructive, clinging to the memories of grandeur, of what he had been.

“I thought you should know.”

“You thought I should _know_?” Hissing, she rounded on him, stumbling, unsteady in her boots on the loose gravel, when she shoved him, and he stepped away with a sigh, seemingly unaffected by the force of her hands. “You want to hurt me, you mean? Why are you _hurting_ me like this, Tommy?”

That was when the tears came, hot and fast, blurring her vision and stinging on her freezing cheeks, with a chest-rattling sob that she tried to hold in with her fingers. And at the sight, Tommy displayed the first bit of true emotion she’d seen on him all morning – surprise. It was a foreign expression on him, the raised eyebrows, the slight part of his lips, and it only inflamed her more.

“I’m not trying to… to _hurt_ you, Brigid.” Her name sounded painful on his lips, like it was poisoning him, and she hoped it true.

Feeling little better than a humiliated child, she exclaimed, “Yes, you are! You’ve done nothing but hurt me since you stepped off that godforsaken train.”

The charged pause between them felt like the shrill anxiety of an officer’s whistle, about to send them over the top, like the time that passed between pulling a grenade’s pin and the inevitable explosion. Brigid’s heart was in her throat, her pulse in her ears, while her teeth chattered in the chill as the wind picked up once more, and the hole where her heart should have been was dark and hollow.

“Then leave,” Tommy said, flicking the stub of his cigarette to the dirt. “Take this as your chance to leave.”

The laugh that bubbled up out of her mouth tasted like bile, and Brigid had to press her hands over her eyes, block out the frail sunlight and his formidable look. It was almost as if, for the briefest moment, the world was closing in on her, like the unadulterated panic that rose up like a dark tide in her chest would pull her under once and for all. She’d kept it at bay for weeks, barely keeping her head above water, and yet in that wash of emotion, she found the briefest gleam of clarity.

She knew what this was. She knew what Thomas _fucking_ Shelby was trying to do to her, as if she hadn’t spent weeks (years, really) watching him push people away. And it was working. She wanted to smack him again, leaving the taste of blood and regret in his mouth. A part of her wanted to chuck his ring in the cut, let it rot at the bottom with his medals.

Yet the bigger part, growing in the empty parts of her heart, wanted to pull him into her arms. As hot tears stung her eyes, Brigid wanted to kiss him and remind him of what she used to mean to him. She wanted _her_ Tommy back, with his wide-open laughter and bright blue eyes, like it had been before the War took every good part of him and buried it in the French mud. She wanted to kiss him, that Tommy, like the very first time, warm and sunlit, and the very last, desperate and salty in the bustle of the train station.

She wanted his pain, and his love, and the rest of his tomorrows. She wanted his family and one of their own, and she wanted to grow old with him by her side.

“Oh, God,” she almost whispered, her racing heart in her throat, her voice on the verge of hysterical. “I’m not leaving you, Tommy Shelby.”

His icy eyes wouldn’t even look at her, turning with a sour expression to stare at the fog of the Cut, and when he spoke, it was the perfunctory tone of a business deal. Like she was nothing more than one of his Peaky boys, or one of the coppers on his payroll. “You deserve someone who has been faithful to you.”

“I don’t care.” Perhaps she was being daft. She’d promised to tell him if he was acting daft, but he’d never said the same. “I want you.”

Martha would have told her. Patrick would have told her. But they were both dead and gone, and so it was up to her to decide what she wanted, and she could feel it steady and true in her heart.

“You deserve someone who doesn’t remind you of the baby you lost every time you look at him,” Tommy went on, and as she sniffed, trying to wipe away her tears, she thought she heard his voice crack.

“It was _our_ baby, Tommy,” she whispered, stepping forward as if a force she couldn’t control was pulling her to him, as if she didn’t want to curl up and sob at the very mention of their child. “And if God’s good, He’ll give us a dozen more.” 

But in a sudden flurry of movement, Tommy spun, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her close. Her skin stung under the force of his grip, his face just a breath away from her own, and for the briefest moment, her heart pounded with something like fear as she watched fury and panic dual in the familiar lines of his face

“God _damn_ it, Bridie, I’m not the same anymore!” His eyes were tortured, brimming with what might have been tears of his own. “Fuck! I’m not the person you fell in love with – I can’t even fucking _sleep_ right anymore. I’m too fucked up in the head to give you your perfect little wedding and your perfect little life – ” 

“I don’t need any of that, I never – ” she sobbed, eyes wide, hands reaching up to clutch at his lapels. “I just want _you_. You promised, you fucking _promised_ – it’s you and me, Tommy Shelby.”

He had whispered it into her mouth, tucked in the shadows in front of her home, that very last night before he shipped out. His ring had still been foreign on her finger, an unfamiliar weight as she held him close, and his eyes had been big and blue and bright with promise.

 _I’m coming back for you, Brigid Murphy,_ he’d breathed when her tears fell hot on his skin. _It’s gonna be you and me for the rest of our days._

He was whispering again, and this time, his voice broke. “I’m no good for you.”

But his hands had loosened their iron grip on her shoulders and found her face, his fingers icy against her damp cheeks, and she couldn’t help but crack a weak, wavering smile. “Like hell.” Pausing, she drew in a long breath, taking in the feel of his heightened pulse in the fingertips pressed against her cheekbones. “No one can make me smile like you.”

He slowly pressed his forehead to hers, as trembling and skittish as a newborn foal. It might have been frigid, the winter wind sweeping about her knees, but in her new coat and his arms, Brigid could feel a summer-like warmth blooming in her heart.

“You’re gonna make something of yourself, Tommy Shelby,” she whispered as her chest thrummed, “and I’m gonna be there to – I don’t know, to do your maths, and clean your wounds, and remind you to eat. And I’m not letting you push me away, no matter how hard you try.”

Tears were dripping down his cheeks, his nose, the curve of his chin, and she felt his shoulders shake under her hands. So Brigid slid them around his torso until she was pressed flush against him, holding him close, and when he wrapped his strong arms around her in turn, it felt as if a dam had burst. His tears in her hair, shaking like a leaf, Tommy broke down in her arms. Brigid understood his pain, in that moment – she could feel it with every fiber of her being.

“I forgive you,” she said, face tucked into the starched white of his shirt, “for everything. The things you’ve told me and the things you haven’t. And the things you won’t ever tell me.”

He sobbed then, pulling her impossibly closer, and Brigid’s chest ached for air, but more than anything else, she ached for him. “Whatever they made you do in France – that’s not you. I know it. And I’m gonna help you forgive yourself.”

Standing there, wrapped up tight in his arms with her eyes shut, Brigid felt that it could have been the last hug they shared. She’d been too breathless and scared to admit how scared she was, caught up in the bustle of the train platform, the heavy smoke of the steam engine and the shouts of other men surrounding them – and she felt much the same now, swallowing around the lump in her throat, hands curling tighter into his coat.

But this Tommy was different. The hollows of his collar were gaunt, and his hands more callused. The arms with which he held her close were stronger, leaner, and he had a puckered bullet scar on the chest that she loved so much. She’d never hug _that_ Tommy, anxious and fidgeting in the rough wool of his service tunic, again, and yet for the first time since he’d returned, Brigid found no sadness in her heart at the thought.

“I don’t deserve you,” he muttered, his lips still in her hair.

“You’ve said as much.”  Smiling, Brigid pulled away, just enough, to look up at him and find those blue eyes she loved so much still rimmed red with tears, and while he wouldn’t let go of her, she managed to bring her hands up to his frozen cheeks to wipe them away. “But I don’t care. You’ve got me for the rest of your days. I love you too much to leave you, Tommy Shelby.” 

Cracking something that could have passed for a smile, Tommy brought her left hand to his lips, pressing a damp kiss to her palm and her ring. And it was such a familiar gesture that Brigid felt herself break once more, hot, almost embarrassed tears slipping down her cheeks as they shared a laugh, as her pulse raced and something a lot like love settled into the cracks of her heart.

“I love you, too,” he said, and when he kissed her, it was salty with their tears, but it felt like the future. “So fucking much.”

No, she’d never kiss her Tommy again. That Thomas Shelby had been lost to the war, buried in the French mud with so many of his comrades, leaving only the memory of him in his wake. But Brigid was sure, deep in her soul, that she could love _this_ Tommy, with his scars and ghosts and callused hands, with everything in her heart, because at least he was _here_ , and he was alive and breathing and well, and he still looked at her as he couldn't remember what his life was like before he saw her.

She’d waited for him for four years, and _he came back_. It all just seemed a small price to pay if it meant having him for the rest of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all, folks! i've loved every bit of sharing this with you - believe it or not, it's the longest thing i've ever managed to finish. so thanks for every comment and kudos, they all mean the world!
> 
> this is the end of this story, but don't be surprised if you see me posting more about them. i've become quite fond :)

**Author's Note:**

> my first published work for this fandom and on this site, so i'd love to hear what you think!


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